1. What happened?

On November 28, the Soyuz-2.1B rocket, hosting 19 satellites, launched from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome. After initial announcements of a successful launch, Roscosmos reported that it could not establish contact the rocket’s primary payload (Meteor-M 2-1), a weather satellite, that was not in its planned orbit.

Animation via Giphy

2. Confirmation...

The failed launch was later confirmed by Telesat, a Canadian satellite operator, that had planned to place its first satellite into LEO using the Soyuz-2.1B rocket. Telesat later confirmed that this failure did not affect their overall constellation plans, and they plan to launch their second satellite late December in India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Telesat Logo Image

Russian news agency, Interfax, claims that it was human error which caused in an early burn that sent the payloads into the ocean. This launch was the second to take place in the Vostochny Cosmodrome, recently built on the former Svobodny missile base.

3. Video

You can watch the rocket take off in the first 30 seconds of the following video. The rest of the video is a very interesting animation of what the rocket is going through.